


did you die?

by kovisk



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Implied Relationships, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, and so am i, he's ready to fucking fight, it's a headcanon now, percival graves is alive and is looking for revenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-01
Updated: 2018-02-01
Packaged: 2019-03-12 04:08:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13539393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kovisk/pseuds/kovisk
Summary: you cannot barter with a lion when your head is in its mouth, but what if you become the lion? what happens then?





	did you die?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pineapplebreads](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pineapplebreads/gifts), [dontyoudarestiles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dontyoudarestiles/gifts).



> No one was going to tell us if Percival Graves was alive so fuck it I did it myself.  
> (Also a gift to both my favorite authors who I cherish and adore greatly)  
> Do enjoy this little headcanon ! (bc im tired of not knowing and hate Johnny Depp)  
> *Low Roars ''I'll Keep Coming' was a big inspiration for this

He remembers vividly the taste of blood and rust. Copper pennies and damp walls. Of ash between his fingers, and blood caked on his knuckles. Skin ruddy, not from exertion; but ruddy from fading bruises. Always burgundy black, fading into burnt orange, then into gruesome yellows. Like a terrible painted sunrise. It would deter him, if he didn't fight tooth and nail to climb his way to the top. Fuck the family name and damn them all back to hell where they belong. He fought through discrimination and he's not going to bite the bullet now. Like a sunrise, it'll come, again and again. Perhaps not as magnificent, or glorious as it first was. For sometimes it's lacking, but it'll always return. He digs his shaking hands into the dirt, claws at the rotting clay, damp and dark. Sinks his hands under to feel the cold. The cool. Finds peace there. Despite shaking and starving, kept alive at the bare minimum, he realizes that you cannot barter with a lion when your head is in its mouth. So he stops. What will the outcome be? Disaster. Fallout. Catastrophe. Is he willing to ruin the whole world for the sake of his own life? He never thought he'd be a martyr. 

He isn't one, he finds out, three weeks later. He doesn't keep track of time, he does count in french to eight hundred, and back again. Has conversations with himself. Anything to keep him awake, alert, aware. He scribes in the clay old poetry, and how he likes his coffee. What his favorite dinner was. His childhood memory. He feels aching in his bones, his head, his whole body weary and worn. He scribes though, speaks, counts. He's been through hell, and if he's made it this far, whose going to stop him now? Gellert perhaps. But then the jig is up, so likely not. Himself, is all he really needs to worry about. If he loses himself, then he loses it all. Three weeks come though, and he remembers vaguely, not vividly of light. Burning, too bright, too strong, like ale in the mornings. He feels numb, lost, desolate, isolated.

But now he walks like he's on fire, blazing a storm, burning bright. Hot and dangerous. He had confidence then, but now it's different. He's stared into the abyss and he's watched it stare back. Hell is a place on earth, and he's survived it. Walked backwards through it. Eyes closed, and faced down his demons. Now he tastes blood, and he's hungry. He's thriving in his element, with embers in his lungs, striking a match and swallowing down the flames each time. He's vindictive, searching for vendetta. He knows they know, he knows they shrink, and curl in, leaves dying, too close to the fire. He was tied down to a pyre, and didn't burn. He was enclosed in smoke, curling, flickering, fighting, fanning out. And all he sees his red. Red hot. All he tastes is ash. Charcoal grey and molten black. 

He feels it in his hands at first, the flicker, a memory he's desperately tried to grasp onto, now he's taken hold. He feels it surge, like gasoline put into flames. It boils and rages, and lights him from the core. He's burning bright, but he's no Icarus. No he's Apollo. With the fight of Ares. He wants to wage war, he wants to pull the tides to him; he wants everyone to be swept away. Drawn in the riptide. He wants so much, but he knows he can't have his endgame and glory too. So instead he leaves, a smoking trail in the night. He's not cowardly. He's been to hell, felt it reach inside and create a home. Black mold growing on his bones, settling like tar in the pit of his stomach. He's been to hell and back, god forbid he sticks around to see the end of it. He packs the bare minimum, lets his bones stretch and pull, magic coursing, fierce, hungry. It wants to be fed. 

He doesn't let it consume him though, he'd die if he tried. He's powerful, but not yet the same. Much of it is impulsiveness, curling deep in his bones. Slinking along his ligaments, sparking a fire across his sandpaper heart. Singed black. He leaves, in a quiet flurry of fleeting despair, much of it swallowed up by a sense of peace; some long forgotten semblance. The angelic boy will have to wait, he knows the whereabouts but right now he's got himself to deal with. So instead he goes south, further, further, and farther father. Not england, no it's too lively there. Too many eyes, too many fingers prying apart the forest he hid himself in, desecrated and barren. They're searching, searching, hunting after a man that died a long time of ago. He leaves behind aliases, and forgotten names, people who have been dead for decades. He changes his story, keeps his tongue silver and spinning. He changes his robes to wool, then to silks, and finds himself in peace in India. He has connections and a few people who are in debt to him. He weaves his lies and his magic curls content at how easy he fits back into his old mold. Cunning, charming, it's why they elected him as head director in the first place. Again though, he's MIA. He's determined for it to stay that way. At least for now. 

He'll get his turn, his time. It's still a long ways off, the war that's thriving like a disease, it's far from him. Won't reach him where he is, where he's still going. A lion can only stay at bay for so long, a fire can burn forever if you let it, and sunrises, sunrises always come again.


End file.
